When I wake up in the morning, the sun shines through the curtains in our living room, the window that reminds me of being at the beach with a window looking out on the ocean. And, yet, despite the brightness of the day’s beginning, by the time it’s time for me to head out for an appointment with one or both of the girls, the sun has been pretty much expunged by a thick layer of dark gray clouds bringing in rain and sometimes summer storms with gusting winds and rumbling thunder. Despite the grayness immediately overhead, the distant views almost always include glimpses of sunshine over the mountain peaks and even just a mile or so down the road. Sunshine and blue skies all around, as if torrents of rain were not pouring down only moments ago.
In these moments overlaid with gray there remains breathtaking beauty—bright beams of sunlight illuminating the darker clouds, those spreading beams arrayed like a royal crown. In other sections of the sky, patches of white clouds seemingly push aside the thicker gray ones, lit up from behind by that same bright sun that only a short while ago seemed all but gone. The light is a reminder that darkness is never intended to stay for long and, as we drive, I cannot help but smile at these things.
Today, as I sat in the waiting room of my daughter’s counselor’s office, the skies opened up and the wind picked up and drove the rain in sideways directions and for a brief moment my heart skipped several beats, my mind filled with memories of Hurricane Helene and the early morning sounds outside as I lay still and quiet in my bed, ears tuned to the storm and yet having no idea what we would wake up to as the storm ebbed and the sunrise worked to push away the darkness. In the days that followed Helene, I spent a lot of time looking up at the sky, taking in the clouds and the way the sunlight filtered through and eventually filled the sky and reflected off of and through the different cloud formations.
Today, I found myself looking to the skies once again as the sideways rains abated and once again the sun competed with the gray storminess. In these July days, almost every storm leaves behind a steamy haze, the humidity palpable and visible in the mist that hovers over the roadways and nestles along the mountain ridges in the distance. Whenever we drive along in those moments, my girls cannot help but point out the mist, the low-hanging clouds, the steam over the roadways. My 17 year old likes that it feels like we are in a rock and roll music video. My 15 year old loves that the sunlight and darkness tend to create rainbows and fascinating cloud formations.
Tonight, as I pondered the natural wonder of the sun and clouds, I recalled a few photos I snapped of some fun cloud shapes and texted them to my girls, curious what they might see in those shapes. We were unanimous in our take on them: dragons. For brief moments we get to live in a fantasy world wherein the skies are filled with dragons and our adventures are the quests of women knights and warriors, off to protect the dragons from those who misunderstand them. In our world, dragons are indeed misunderstood and unfairly treated and so we are fierce protectors of their honor. Perhaps it’s because we liken dragons to autistics who are also misunderstood and wrongly perceived. In fact, we may liken many outsiders and marginalized and misunderstood people and book characters to autistics, claiming them as our own, claiming them as part of our neurodivergent tribe.
The other day, my 17 year old expressed feeling like an outcast even among outcasts because she doesn’t always get the popular culture references to television shows or movies or even popular music. My 15 year old has made similar comments. They are in good company. Yukon Cornelius says the same to Rudolph and Hermie the Elf in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: How do you like that? Even among misfits you’re misfits. But is being a misfit so bad if it means you get to be the dragon or the hero of your story in an epic way? These two remarkable young women are like the dragons in the clouds and in the books we read, like Wings of Fire and other books with similarly misunderstood protagonists. And yet, I love that they see the world, experience the world, even live in the world, in different ways.
I told my 17 year old that today. I love that she spends hours and hours each day creating, creating art and writing stories, listening to her favorite music. The same with my 15 year old. I love that they spend their time in ways that don’t always line up with the ways of the world, even the neurodivergent world at times. Creating—drawing, telling stories, writing stories, sketching original characters and assigning storylines and backstories to them—this is magical, mystical work. Important work. It’s as delightful and wonderful as looking up at the sky and spotting clouds that resemble dragons. These are the things that open the door to incredible new worlds of the heart, soul, spirit, and mind. May these two young women always have their heads in the clouds like they do right now.